On Friday in Detroit, union leaders joined immigrants rights and other community representatives meeting with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Assistant Secretary John Morton about increasing complaints of abusive conduct by ICE agents.

Two weeks earlier, ICE agents had surrounded a Detroit public charter elementary school where immigrant parents were dropping off their kids, and detained at least two parents.Though agency officials later stated their own procedures had likely been violated, the next week, agents also targeted another Detroit school.

Today (Monday) at 6 p.m., the United Auto Workers (UAW) hall in Dearborn will host a rally denouncing ICE’s conduct at the school and other recent incidents, including the strip search of a mother in front of her son while in detention in Battle Creek, Mich.

“When she complained, agents told her ‘You’re lucky we don’t just shoot you in the head,’” says a blog advertising the event. Congressmen Luis Gutierrez, John Conyers and Hansen Clarke will attend the rally. (A suburb of Detroit, Dearborn is home to many Middle Eastern and other immigrants).

A press release from Detroit groups says:

Over the recent months, the Detroit ICE office has exhibited a pattern of civil rights infringements, internal policy violations, and violations of law. This has ranged from surrounding elementary schools and scaring parents and children to illegal searches of homes.

Even after ICE issued a statement last week, admitting that it broke its own policies by intimidating and tormenting families at Hope of Detroit Academy, ICE officers were spotted at another elementary school.

Morton has also been meeting with community leaders and elected officials about the agency’s embattled Secure Communities program, which purports to target undocumented immigrants with criminal records but has actually resulted in scores of immigrants with no criminal convictions and only minor misdemeanors being put into deportation proceedings.

Since February, different groups have released portions of a massive cachet of internal ICE documents obtained through FOIAs by the National Day Laborer Organizing Network along with the Benjamin Cardozo Law School and Center for Constitutional Rights.

The documents show how ICE officials strategized to aggressively implement the Secure Communities program despite opposition from law enforcement, elected officials and community leaders in many parts of the country.

The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) released documents showing how ICE tried to implement the program in Cook County, which includes Chicago, despite city and county sanctuary ordinances that would likely prohibit it; and despite the opposition of elected leaders.

The participation of unions in protests against Secure Communities and other alleged abuses by ICE is an important acknowledgement that rather than “stealing jobs," undocumented immigrants are an integral part of the American workforce and economy, and many are union members.

The Detroit meeting with Morton included leaders from the AFL-CIO, UAW and the Service Employees International union. The leaders made a series of demands of Morton:

1.) Pursuant to ICE’s own guidelines, “Field Guidance on Enforcement Actions or Investigative Activities At or Near Sensitive Locations,” we demand to know who authorized enforcement actions at schools, if anyone, and why.

2.) We demand that ICE immediately respect their own policy, and end all enforcement activities near schools, churches, mosques, community centers and health clinics, and ends warrant-less searches and raids of homes.

3.) We demand that the officers involved in Thursday’s incident here at Hope Elementary School be identified and disciplined.

4.) We demand that officers involved in the warrant-less search of Rogelio Perez’s home be identified and disciplined.

5.) We demand that Detroit Field Office Director Rebecca Adducci submit a “Civil Rights Plan” to the community that specifically addresses how problems like this will be prevented from occurring in the future.

6.) We demand an internal investigation into recent ICE practices with accountability for those responsible, up to and including the discipline, transfer or removal of responsible parties.

See why we’re re-inventing the In These Times magazine, and how you can be part of it.

Kari Lydersen, an In These Times contributing editor, is a Chicago-based reporter, author and journalism professor at Medill at Northwestern University, where she is fellowship director of the Social Justice News Nexus. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Reader and The Progressive, among other publications. Her books include Mayor 1%: Rahm Emanuel and the Rise of Chicago's 99 Percent., Shoot an Iraqi: Art, Life and Resistance Under the Gun and Revolt on Goose Island: The Chicago Factory Takeover, and What it Says About the Economic Crisis.

Dave Francis: you've repeatedly ignored requests not to use terms like "illegal" to describe people, and at this point it seems clear that you are a single issue troll. So long!
Fred: while you're free to express your opinion and disagree with the content of articles, please take a moment to familiarize yourself with the Drop The I-Word campaign: http://colorlines.com/droptheiword/
In These Times has taken the media pledge to make our publication an I-Word-free zone. Please don't call people "illegals" on this website.Posted by Joe Macaré on 2011-04-19 11:15:13

The headline should be: "Unions fight for rights of corporations to exploit workers and cheat people out of fair wages and benefits."
The economics of illegal workers makes wage slaves - people who can never be part of the middle class.
Unions approve of this? Why aren't they picketing the companies hiring illegals, instead of pandering to groups that really represent corporations looking for cheap help?Posted by Fred Donaldson on 2011-04-19 07:45:13

Unions have a great deal to lose in this conflict, because hundreds of thousands of people in these organizations are ILLEGAL. As there numbers have dwindled in union dues, they have added foreign nationals to their ranks. It's wrong and against the law, to hire individuals who skipped the inspections and the "Rule of Law." So of course anything to do with rigid, enforcement is typical of Richard Trumka, President of the AFL-CIO and other trade unions.
No need to deport as the cost would be enormous; not that matters to Washington? The demand from TEA PARTY Senators and Congressman of the newly revised, E-Verify that will detect illegal aliens in the workplace will enforce the 1986 Reagan law. Nobody is to be exempt--longtime employees and new hires will be verified; Attrition by enforcement! Severe fines of companies who scorn the law, including business asset confiscation and imprisonment; not house arrest, but placement in the general prison population. Just because you own a business, doesn't mean you can hire illegal labor? Fact is they are stealing employment, from the ten million Americans out of work. They have families to feed, mortgages to pay and so there should be zero tolerance for this heinous criminal issue. Auditing of companies should be stepped up and those caught red-handed, should be imprisoned as an example of not less than one to five years. No more slap on the wrist, but be held accountable. TO ME THAT'S A FELONY? IN FACT ENTERING AMERICA WITHOUT PERMISSION SHOULD BE CLASSIFIED AS A FELONY.
As thousands of illegal alien families are leaving Arizona, so the price to support them there is going down. Medicaid payments for economic non-citizens will be receding, including the costs for education, health-Care and prison cells, which is the States portion of the obligation. Hundreds of millions will be saved, even a billion or so. Utah--The sanctuary State of California, Nevada can least afford it, with the Golden State bordering on a 24 Billion dollar insolvency. Those lax States are financially seem unconnected to the honest population, will find the U-haul's and trucks crossing the State line hoping for a new refuge? They certainly won’t be heading for Georgia, but they could easily go northwards to Oregon or Washington, if State legislators approve driver’s licenses for illegal aliens. Assuredly, New Mexico that has just canceled enactment of a bill to deny driver’s licenses will get their share of economic refugees from Arizona.
Other States where citizens and permanent resident’s rights are sold to the highest bidder will also see crowds of foreign national families arriving there. The fact is today through rampant incompetence of both political parties covering decades. The invasion has allowed by sheer neglect, attributing to the damaging US treasury deficit, that is destroying America. Households may have two parents that have been allowed to stay, because a newborn baby has received instant citizenship under the misinterpreted 14th Amendment. Over time other illegal family members have stolen across the body living in the same likely Section 8 housing. Few lawmakers have dared declare they are anti-illegal immigrant as they cringe against the Leftist "Political Correctness" garbage of the racial bigotry. But that’s the only agenda the Left has got, because they cannot fight the massive costs presented to them.
But a few brave political advocates are not being deceived, by the gaping border fence and are now enacting laws to stem the continuous influx of illegal migrants, immigrants, criminals and almost certainly murdering terrorists. Last week, Rep. Bilbray R-CA) added his name to the list of co-sponsors for the Nuclear Priority Act that would end chain migration and the CLEAR Act that would require collaboration between local law enforcement agents and federal agents in the enforcement of federal immigration laws. Ordinary working people are informing ICE of employers who are hiring illegal aliens and as the job market gets even rougher "Whistle blowers" will come out of the woodwork to report suspicious goings on? The TEA PARTY will not abide the liberal court system or the Leftist Czars hidden in the Department of InJustice. They are using unconstitutional means for clandestine amnesties, Immigration Reform, Sanctuary States or anything that has the obnoxious stench of Amnesty.
Read about illegal alien widespread Tax fraud at http://www.thesocialcontract.com/ the Pdf file "Illegal Aliens and American Medicine." http://tinyurl.com/o6r27 and the report "DRAINING AMERICA INTO POVERTY" at http://tinyurl.com/3mv3vzm These are reports that the Leftists, US Government Czars and radical open border zealots or lobbyists prefer you didn’t see.
The Tea Party has a propagating foothold in the Republican Party, as thousands every day of every party affiliation is joining. The Tea Party lawmakers will not tolerate raising the debt ceiling in the US budget, to support the 20 million plus illegal alien families using the birthright baby law to gain a foothold in America. Thousands will keep coming until the American people demand the real fences be constructed and every tool available is used to stop this invasion. Want truthful answers, to your question of costs and so much more, view NumbersUSA website.
The Tax code as it is now Creates Inequality
it’s time that US lawmakers implemented a flat tax for everybody. The tax code is so full of fraud, so full of loopholes that corporations like General Electric, Google pay nothing; Oil companies, the sugar industry gets massive subsidies; some politician, wealthy people and corporations slip past our IRS masters, by hiding money in tax havens overseas. If everybody paid according to what they brought, sold all consumers would pay their fair share. Just like US citizens and legal residents, the average US taxpayer are forced by laws, to pay for the support of foreign nationals illegally settled here. In 2012 we must vote for a Tea Party president and a Tea party Senate and Congressman.
We also have a growing crisis America, when illegal aliens are voting in our elections.
NO Copyright on my blogs, comments, articles, ever. Distribute freely.Posted by Dave Francis on 2011-04-18 15:52:00

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